Gone Fishing

Right now my parents are in France for the big gathering of pacemaker engineers [note: I went a few years ago and engineers worldwide all dress the same: polo, khaki pants, brown belt, brown shoes] and to visit our family there. Meanwhile, my brother is backpacking through Southeast Asia with his fellow recent-graduated fraternity brothers. What does that mean? I am the last Doan holding down the U.S. of A.

Fortunately I am not the last Doan stuck in her office. Alex's family borrows a cabin from friends up near Big Sur (see below) and have been up there all week. I am ducking out of work early this week to meet them there and will be gone until Sunday evening. A long weekend of beach lounging, winning board games, hiking, and yes, even ocean fishing. We will see how that works out.

[Photo courtesy of MikeLevin.com]

The Office

Now that my friends and I have entered the working world, we can really understand why people relate to the show, The Office. My friend's boss came to a meeting in a Star Trek costume. My other friend's office blew off heads of dummies to show the hazards of fireworks. Another friend sat through a two hour presentation about the difference between "that" and "which." From the bizarre to the boring, I think there are so many moments when we sit in our offices and wonder if everything is really happening.

As for my office, we are now held hostage by the kitchen patrol. One of the lawyers has made it his mission to figure out how 100+ pieces of chocolate disappear from our office in less than two days. He went door to door interrogating people; I am actually surprised that he did not check our trashcans. And today, when someone brought in homemade chocolate chip cookies, he made a chart with all of our names so we could put tally marks for every cookie we take.

Don't worry, it's all in good fun (I think). Things are pretty "normal" in our offices even if our cases are crazy . . . especially those family law ones.

Limited Liability Confections

My friend Ben, who is also in law school, sent me a picture of the blueberry cheesecake he made. I told him that if the law did not work out for us, we could open up a bakery. I know it sounds a little like Warren Brown, who suffered a breakdown as a lawyer before deciding to devote himself to Cake Love, his bakery in DC; but hopefully we would make our decision before losing feeling in our limbs. We would also want to retain some of our legal background.

So we came up with Doan Benjamin LLC: Limited Liability Confections. (he calls me by my last name) This got us to thinking of names for our baked goods. Here are the 'guilty pleasures' we came up with:

Contempt cakes
Tort tarts
Tria-fle
Blue(book) berry pie
Guilt-free chocolate cakes
Arraignment meringues
Doe-nuts
Lemon (dis)bar
Impeach Cobbler
Circuit banana split
And my favorite: Tirami-sue

I think one of the reason why Ben and I are such good friends is because we both revel on in nerdiness. We used to analogize relationships to political science concepts. We are also both foodies. Law school has only made us worse.

Now it's time to trademark all these names before another lawyer steals them.

[Photo Courtesy of Cupcake-Momma]

Monday Mornings

This morning was such a Monday. I decided to refuel the Green Monster this morning, which is already depressing enough with the gas prices. I put the nozzle into the car and turned away (I admit it, I didn't want to see how much it was costing). Then I started smelling gas, and I turned around. Looks like the nozzle had started leaking and there was gas all over the ground. I am not sure how much gas I wasted, but at $4.60 a gallon, I felt like a bully stole my lunch money.

Thank goodness there was a big bowl of pieces of dark chocolate with almonds in the office kitchen. I had two pieces and a cup of tea for breakfast. A cure for a rocky morning and prevention from anything else bad happening today. Plus, aren't dark chocolate and almonds both supposed to be good for you?

Party City

This summer I am living in the infamous Isla Vista (IV). For those of you who do not know, IV is about 10 miles north of Santa Barbara and where most of UCSB kids live. It is also a notorious party town, especially for its Halloween festivities. Though I would have preferred somewhere quieter, this was the only area where I could find cheap rent for two and a half months.

Although I've seen or heard some of the parties here during the week, this was my first time I did not go home on the weekend. Even with half of the Santa Barbara kids home for the summer, these kids can still wreck havoc. I think I have seen bigger parties in the past four weeks than I saw in my four years at UCLA.

There is a pool in the middle of my complex (horrible idea), and thus far I have witnessed the aftermath of bikes in the pool, pots of macaroni and cheese on the ground, cans of Natural Ice, Popov, and other nasty cheap alcohol littering the stairways, and red solo cups everywhere. I feel bad, and actually embarrassed, as the maintenance crews clean this up every morning.

Fortunately my room is probably the furthest room from the pool/party area and I can hardly hear anything when I close my door. Plus, having a loud and nocturnal roommate my first year of college has conditioned me for anything.

[Photo of IV Halloween courtesy of Wikipedia]